


living in the currents you create

by plinys



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, sin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:10:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8612317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: “I have seen the way you watch Chastity."





	

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS FOR FANTASTIC BEASTS BE HERE, FULL WARNING
> 
> I saw this movie a second time with a friend who pointed out that Graves character shifts at one point, and what if this is the point in which Grindelwald swooped in? I tried to do her idea justice and sorta missed the mark, because I haven't written in forever. Hope somebody enjoys this. 
> 
> Not beta'd cause I can't let real people know how much I sin.

He had put much faith in the art of Divination. 

It had been an unnecessary course in his years at Ilvermorny, one in which he had spent more time passing notes with his fellow classmates, rather than looking for guidance from a cup of tea.

However, he does not say that now. 

Does not dare. 

To have been allowed into Grindelwald’s inner circle is a privilege that not many wizards are lucky enough to possess, to be this close to greatest, to the revolutionary that will free wizard kind - is a true privilege. More than the silver spoons of his mother’s Rhode Island home could ever have prepared him for. This is where greatest begins, in a dark room illuminated only be the full moon outside the open window. 

“I want to usher in a new age of wizardry, for this, I need the child Mendeleev has seen.”

“I will find them,” he insists. As though this task were not already delegated to him, as though he had a choice in the matter. 

It was this or death, and Percival Graves had no wish to die. 

He had only a wish to serve all of wizardkind. 

“It would be an honor.”

\---

He dreams of fire, flames racing up his body, covering his skin. It had been ages since witches were burnt at the stake, and even then, the fires hasn’t burned. Only the no-majs had suffered that fate, foolishly singled out by their acquaintances for their unnatural behavior or tricked by greedy Scourers. Yet in his dream, it is he standing before the flames, fire licking at his legs as a crowd of jeering Puritans look on. 

The shower he takes upon waking is not nearly cold enough to chase the feeling of fire on his flesh away.

It lingers there hours later, as he stands in the mass of a crowd, listening to that awful woman - the woman that Grindelwald had mentioned - speak out to the crowd. He imagines briefly stepping forward, showing her just what the  _ magic  _ she spoke of could look like. 

The way it too could burn. 

There will be a time and place for that, when the reckoning has begun.

Instead he turns his eyes to the two that stand beside her, a young man and woman. Both with solemn faces, hands heavy with stacks of leaflets. The Barebone children. Though not children anymore - 

Chastity and Credence. 

He considers taking the girl into his confidence. 

She would be an easy one - all young women were in this day and age, no matter how pious or  _ chaste  _ they appeared to be. He would appeal to those sensibilities, a hint of flattery and a taste of the unknown. Even a girl with strict religious codes could be broken, the hand just had to be heavy enough ,the temptation strong enough. Many a young woman had told Percival just how tempting he could be.

None of them enough to fascinate him very long.

Their soft curves, falsetto voices, pouting lips -

There was a reason his aging mother still asked when he would bring a nice young woman home for her to meet. 

Chastity would be an easy target, certainly, but not an enjoyable one.

\---

In the end, it matters not his preference, Porpentina makes the decision for him.

\---

“I have seen you in the crowds that gather for ma. You listen to her sermons you- you-.”

Percival does not deny this, though his wand still hovers over the boy’s temple, ready to obliviate him as he had been ordered to do. There is no fear in the eyes that meet his own, though fear is a common expression from these eyes, but rather a curiosity that causes Percival’s hand to hesitate. 

“It is my job to listen.”

“Why?”

The answer to this question would not matter in a moment. 

The boy would forget these words were ever spoken.

Then he says, “I have seen the way you watch Chastity,” in a voice carrying just hint of something akin to jealousy. 

\---

The boy is malleable, responding to praise with a desperation that seems unheard of. Why he had ever considered the girl when this subject was offer before him, Percival could no longer seem to fathom. 

A soft hand ghosting over his skin is enough to cause the boy to lean into him, a gasp tumbling from his lips before he can think to censor himself. Intimacy without effort, it makes him want so much more, to apparate away from the alley they so often meet in. To take Credence up into his home, into his bed.  

There have not been many others like this one, not since his days at Ilvermorny hiding in their dorm room bathroom, hurried handjobs, moans bitten off into the sleeves of their robes, faces flushed from something out than the New England chill. 

“How old are you, boy,” he asks, without thinking to stop himself. 

He’s still knitting Credence’s hand back together, the effortless magic, barely any effort, but worth the reverent look it earn him each time. 

“Twenty-four, sir.”

“Not a boy at all then, are you?” 

When he raises his eyes from Credence’s newly healed hand, there is a flush of color along his face. Just barely there. Easy enough to miss if one were not looking for it. 

\---

He never forgets his task.

His duty to the cause.

Yet, he cannot help but enjoy the task, for however brief a moment he is allowed to indulge. 

\---

Percival cups his hand against the back of Credence’s neck pulling them together. He can feel Credence’s pulse beat beneath his fingers, a rapidly increasing rhythm. Just as he can feel the puff of hot breathe against the skin of his neck, and the desperate shaking of the man beside him. 

It is this impulse that causes him to speak, to bring to action something, “You have no idea the things I would do to you if given the chance.” 

There’s a tremble in Credence’s voice when he replies, “I have imagined them.” 

His grip shifts, holding Credence steady while he pulls himself backwards. Credence will not look at him now, his eyes shifting around the alley, as though ashamed of the desires that he has admitted to. The desires that Percival could not possibly have missed.

He wonders how the boy could not realize how obvious his own desires are. 

Or how he could not so clearly see Percival’s mirror of them. 

“The bible says that this is unnatural,” Credence says, his voice barely more than a whisper“That these urges are to be ashamed of, to  be resisted at all costs, and yet here I- I cannot.”

\---

When he dreams now it is not of fire, but of a warm body beneath him, to open and pilant. Desperate for a touch that has been all but forbidden before. 

He does not have to dream for long, the image takes place beside him. Nervous at first. Turning his head away, and squeezing his eyes shut, as though this could erase any shame that he might feel. As though he may be struck and pushed aside at any moment.

Too used to this treatment, to a kind hand that turns harsh.

Instead Percival shows him just how kind a hand can be, the warmth and weight of it against another flesh, the sweet release that feels like salvation. 

\---

“Do not forget, Mr. Graves, that you are replaceable…” 

  
  



End file.
